New Jersey mayor ratchets up allegations against Christie

TRENTON, N.J. — The Democratic mayor of a town severely flooded by superstorm Sandy has ratcheted up her allegation that Republican Gov. Chris Christie’s administration tied recovery funds to her support for a prime real estate project and said that she turned over documents to a federal prosecutor investigating his staff.

While a spokesman for Christie called Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer’s claims “categorically false,” Zimmer said she met with federal prosecutors in Newark for several hours Sunday at their request and turned over a journal and other documents.

On Saturday, Zimmer said Christie’s lieutenant governor, Kim Guadagno, and a top community development official separately told her that recovery funds would flow to her city if she expedited the commercial development project by the New York-based Rockefeller Group.

On Sunday, she went a step further and said on CNN’s “State of the Union with Candy Crowley” that Guadagno told her that the request “was a direct message from the governor.”

“The lieutenant governor pulled me aside and said, essentially, ‘You’ve got to move forward with the Rockefeller project. This project is really important to the governor.’ And she said that she had been with him on Friday night and that this was a direct message from the governor,” Zimmer recalled Guadagno saying.

Zimmer said in a statement Sunday night that she will “provide any requested information and testify under oath about the facts of what happened when the Lieutenant Governor came to Hoboken and told me that Sandy aid would be contingent on moving forward with a private development project.”

Hoboken, a low-lying city of 50,000 across from Manhattan, was nearly swallowed by the Hudson River during Sandy, with three of its electrical substations and most of its firehouses flooded, businesses and homes submerged, the train station inundated with water, and people trapped in high-rises because elevators didn’t work and lobbies were underwater. Zimmer has proposed a comprehensive flood mitigation plan and has applied for $100 million in grants to help make it happen.

Zimmer said she didn’t reveal the conversation with Guadagno until now because she feared no one would believe her. But, with Hoboken having received just $342,000 out of $1.8 billion in Sandy recovery aid from the state in the first funding round, she said, she is speaking out in hopes her city won’t be shut out in a second funding wave, when the state is due to disperse $1.4 billion. Hoboken has also received millions in federal aid.

Christie, meanwhile, is embroiled in another scandal that threatens to undercut his second term and future presidential ambitions. The U.S. attorney’s office and a state legislative panel are investigating allegations that Christie aides engineered traffic jams in Fort Lee by closing lanes to the George Washington Bridge, possibly as payback against the town’s Democratic mayor, who didn’t endorse Christie for re-election.

Democratic Assemblyman John Wisniewski, the legislator leading the state investigation, told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that his committee would look into Zimmer’s political payback allegation as well.

“I think we have to give the allegations serious thought,” he said, “because this is a pattern we’ve heard time and time again throughout New Jersey.”

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, a Republican, told “Meet the Press” that Wisniewski is part of a “partisan witch hunt” and should step down.

MELBOURNE, Australia — For the record, Sloane Stephens was not cheering in celebration when Serena Williams lost. She was making fun of Ana Ivanovic’s coaches.

The 20-year-old American was captured on camera watching Williams’ surprise upset loss in the fourth round of the Australian Open over the weekend. With a big smile, Stephens raised both arms as if to high-five the person